Indulge me for a moment and imagine that we replaced energy with drinking water. In Bitcoin, we’d see a system whose design motivates rational people to pump both surplus, and non-surplus drinking water alike, into the ocean as the system would pay them to do it. We’d have a band of profiteers extolling this as a virtue, pointing us to the great strides in their rate of efficiency at disposing of surplus drinking water made by moving taps closer to the ocean, and pleading with us for gratitude as yet more fabulous advances in drinking water production technology are sure to be the result of this new market for surplus drinking water. And in such a world, why would you build a water tower, or a reservoir if someone would just pay you to pump surplus water into the ocean?

Sure, pumping is a little work, and you’re paid for it, but is it really … necessary?